Hate crimes or not, desecrations hurt, local Catholics say

Whether the vandalism of religious statues in Hingham and Weymouth was motivated by ill will toward Catholics is something only the responsible party knows for certain.

Karen Goulart

Anger and alcohol appear to be fueling the recent acts of vandalism directed at religious statues and buildings on the South Shore, experts say.

Regardless of whether those responsible for the incidents in Hingham and Weymouth acted out of hate toward Catholics, they likely knew that their work would be construed that way, said Phil Quinn, a psychologist at South Shore Mental Health Center.

“I get the sense that someone is very angry,” Quinn said. “It’s hard to tell if they’re angry at the Catholic Church or just angry in general. And when you’re angry, you may strike out at symbols of society or religion.”

Defacing a religious symbol sends a message, he said, but not necessarily one of hatred.

The people most affected by the vandalism don’t necessarily agree.

The Rev. Christopher Palladino of St. Paul’s Church in Hingham said he was disappointed Nov. 18 when he found a sexual phrase scrawled on a wall of his church.

He covered it until it could be cleaned, and he says he didn’t consider it a hate crime – until he heard of other incidents.

“When you go over and above a prank, you cross the line,” the Rev. Palladino said. “It could also be that these people are truly angry. Only they can say that, and they have to come forward.”

The Rev. Palladino and the pastor, the Rev. James Rafferty, prayed that the vandals would understand that what they did was wrong.

At Notre Dame Academy, a Catholic high school in Hingham, vandals desecrated statues and spray-painted a sexually vulgar phrase – the same one written at St. Paul’s two days earlier.

At this point, the Rev. Palladino and Hingham police believed they were dealing with hate crimes.

At Notre Dame, empty beer cans and a T-shirt from Assumption College, a Catholic school in Worcester, were found.

On Monday, a statue of the Virgin Mary was found defaced at St. Jerome’s Church in North Weymouth.

There are about 65 million Catholics in the United States, about 26 percent of the population.

The latest hate crime statistics compiled by the FBI put the number of anti-religious bias crimes reported in the U.S. at 1,750 in 2006. Of those crimes, 4.9 percent were committed against Catholics. It’s a relatively small number, but one that rose 33 percent from 2004 to 2006, from 54 to 76.

“You have to look at it both ways. It’s vandalizing property, but there’s another element to it,” the Rev. Palladino said. “These are religious places, and they are offending a community.”

The sexual nature of some of the vandalism is another indication of anger, Quinn said, something the perpetrator would recognize as being particularly offensive.

The Rev. Harvey Egan, a professor of theology at Boston College, said the use of sexuality is not uncommon when someone has anger toward a religion and wants to degrade it.

The motivation could have been hate, the Rev. Egan said, or the actions of a broken person.

“It can be hate, but it can also just be that people are very sick,” he said. “In my mind, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a hate crime; it can be random violence from a violent person.”

Hate crime or not, people seem to agree it was deliberate.

“Somebody put a lot of thought into this, which is interesting because in this day and age most people can appreciate the legal penalty for this can be relatively high,” Quinn said.

However painful and whatever the reasoning, the Rev. Palladino wanted to make one message clear:

“It’s terrible this happened, but we reach out to this person or people. We’re not out for vengeance. We just ask for it to stop,” he said. “If you’re willing to come forward, go ahead, and be assured of our prayers.”